House In London Research Articles

Editorial introductions

Editorial introductions

Temporary use of space: Urban processes between flexibility, opportunity and precarity

The temporary use of privately-owned, empty space has been advocated by some as economically sensible and socially progressive, making use of unproductive and empty spaces by providing access to space for those who are otherwise unable to obtain it. The article critically examines this concept, arguing that the temporary use of space should be analysed as part of the urban development process with its temporal and spatial fluctuations and its multivalent outcomes. It investigates the production of empty space and the temporary use of space as a space of opportunity and a flexible method of production. By drawing on the case of Chesterfield House in London, in the context of the British response to the global financial crisis, the temporary use of space is shown to be a moment in a complex process, offering some opportunities, but also revealing the brevity of this moment and the precarity of its users. Beyond the realm of necessity, it may be transformed into a cultural choice, a lubricant of urban development and a medium of social change, signifying a space of opportunity for some and vulnerability for others.

Introduction

Introduction Katherine Isobel Baxter (bio) and Yael Levin (bio) Conrad scholarship is forever widening its reach. Over the years scholars have turned their attention to questions of biography, composition, and publishing history, geography, politics, identity, sexuality, language, translation, adaptation, medicine, music, food, finance, and more. Among this cornucopia of scholarship certain key issues emerge, notably identity, international and transnational concerns, and the life of the man himself. It is striking that these themes are also those which shape the key publications of one of the field's leading scholars, Robert Hampson. From Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity (1992), through Cross-Cultural Encounters in Joseph Conrad's Malay Fiction (2000) to Conrad's Secrets (2012), Hampson's critical work anticipates and shapes these issues in Conrad scholarship. On February 17, 2018, a symposium was held at Senate House in London to celebrate Hampson's work on the occasion of his retirement from Royal Holloway. The symposium brought together colleagues, collaborators, and former doctoral students who worked with Hampson over the years. The articles collected here developed out of that event. Our broad theme was "Space and Geography in Conrad's Fiction" and, in keeping with the variety of approaches noted above, contributors brought to the theme a striking array of perspectives. This critical range notwithstanding, the articles collected here all demonstrate the huge impact of what has commonly come to be designated the "spatial" turn on how we adopt and adapt our approaches to Conrad. This critical turn in literary studies can be traced back to the work of poststructuralists, social theorists, and geographers of the 1970's. Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (1991) follows the shift heralded by such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Henri Lefebvre, and David Harvey in articulating the need to attend to this particular critical focus. For Jameson, the transition should be understood as a historical marker of critical change. He [End Page 1] writes: "Our psychic experience, our cultural languages, are today dominated by categories of space rather than by categories of time, as in the preceding period of high modernism" (16). Space emerges as the dominant historical, cultural, and literary trope, superseding time. Moreover, in Jameson's reading, this transition traces a fault line between modernism and postmodernism. The stakes of this critical shift are helpfully unpacked in Robert T. Tally, Jr.'s introduction to The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space: Whereas it had once seemed that the nineteenth century had been dominated by a discourse of time, history, and teleological development and a modernist aesthetic of the early twentieth century enshrined the temporal dimension, especially with respect to individual psychology, and—apart from interest in mere setting, regionalism, or local color, perhaps—matters of geography, topography, or spatiality played a subordinate role in critical scholarship and teaching. In the great works of realism and modernism, at least in the most influential scholarship devoted to them, time maintained its supremacy, with both history and temporality dominating the discourse, while geography and a sense of place were in many cases relegated to secondary status. Whereas time represented narrative development and change, space was often viewed as mere background or an empty container in which the unfolding of events over some durée could take place. In recent literary and cultural studies, notably with the advent of postmodernism and postcolonial theory, but also in other interdisciplinary approaches to literature, space has reemerged as a principal concern. (1–2) The significant reconceptualizations of space emerging in the latter half of the twentieth century offer methods to read against the time-centered modernist ethos. They stake out a new critical engagement with a new literary and cultural aesthetic. More recently, scholarly efforts to widen the scope of traditional modernist studies helpfully intervene in what has come to be seen as an artificial epistemic divide between time-bound modernism and space-bound postmodernism. Rather than follow the rule of different methodologies for different literary moments, such studies draw from the insights of current writing on space in order to reconsider canonical modernist texts. Andrew Thacker's Moving through Modernity: Space and Geography in Modernism proceeds from the premise that "Jameson's distinction between...

Editors’ Introduction

Editors’ Introduction Jordana Blejmar and Cecilia Sosa This special issue is the result of a series of screenings titled Meeting the Directors: Dialogues Between New Argentine Cinema & Theatre, held in 2013 at Senate House in London. A joint venture between the Institute of Latin American Studies and the Institute of Modern Languages Research, both part of the University of London, the screenings were open to the general public and were designed to explore the dialogues and exchanges taking place between the so-called New Argentine Cinema and the less-well-known New Argentine Theatre. The series was the first time that such a range of diverse experimental productions had been shown in the United Kingdom alongside conversations with the young directors, who were either present at the venue or interviewed via video conferences on the day of the screenings. This special issue builds on those conversations, identifying an upcoming genre in contemporary Argentine cultural production, one that is marked by a hybrid aesthetics, a blending of fact and fiction, a playful spirit, and transnational dialogues that take place on both stage and screen. The various contributions included in this publication highlight the innovative uses of technology, humour, live music, and dance in this up-and-coming body of work, one that, over the last few years, has challenged the rigidity of generic boundaries. The essays engage critically with a particular series of films and theatrical pieces by directors such as Romina Paula, Lola Arias, Mariano Pensotti, Alejo Moguillansky, Matías Piñeiro, Edgardo Dieleke, and Daniel Casabé, among others. While most of these pieces were screened at Senate House, some of them, such as Campo minado (Minefield), which debuted in 2016 in the UK, were included especially for this issue. It is our contention that together these works exemplify the emergence of a fresh and exciting generational, transnational, and trans-disciplinary voice within Argentine performing arts. [End Page 9] Beyond New Argentine Cinema and Biodrama While the emergence and development of the so-called New Argentine Cinema during the 1990s and the new millennium have received considerable attention from local and international scholars, critics have suggested that this trend has recently reached a standstill. As Jens Andermann has pointed out: “[A]fter the cusp of social and political emergency in Argentina had passed and the initial excitement had worn off, critics could predictably do little but detect the ‘exhaustion’ of the very movement they had conjured up” (xxi). Thus, Andermann concludes, “the time has perhaps arrived for looking at new Argentine cinema without the capital letters” (xxi). In contrast to the arguable exhaustion of New Argentine Cinema, a community of Argentine theatre-practitioners and young filmmakers has fashioned a unique and lively creative space within both the domestic market and major international festivals. In the current post-New Argentine Cinema period, this collection of essays addresses the way in which cinema and theatre have been experiencing a fruitful exchange of interests, directors, writers, castings, and audiences, giving room to a new circuit that renovates and enhances both art forms. More specifically, this dossier examines how a playful overlapping of documentary and fiction has managed to push forward and reanimate not only the ostensible wave of neo-realist stories and dry humour introduced by New Argentine Cinema, but also a particular form of documentary theatre that has come to be known as “biodrama.” The term was originally coined by director Vivi Tellas to describe a series of biographical pieces in which performers re-enacted episodes of their real lives on stage. As Philippa Page points out in her contribution, Tellas coined the term “biodrama” in 2002 as a response to the critical aftermath of the economic and political crisis of 2001. Page argues that biodrama “uses theatre to explore the possibilities of rebuilding a sense of community [. . .] in what was, at the time of its inception, a severely debilitated post-crisis social fabric.” For Tellas, the return of experience was also the return of the personal, albeit a particular type of self, one immersed in politics and culture. Many of the films and theatrical plays studied in this issue could arguably be considered enhanced forms of biodrama. However, they have acquired...

Piltdown case: Further questions

About 60 years ago, a South African anatomist, Joseph Weiner, published a book entitled The Piltdown Forgery, exposing a hoax that had been perpetrated about 100 years ago at the site of Piltdown in Sussex, England. The announcement of 'Piltdown Man' - classified as Eoanthropus dawsoni and believed to be a hominid apparently associated with Pleistocene fauna - had been made by Smith Woodward of the British Museum (Natural History) at Burlington House in London on 18 December 1912. However, it turned out that the 'hominid' was a fabrication in which a subfossil human cranium and a modern orangutan jaw (both stained brown) were placed together in a gravel pit, thereby confusing palaeontologists. In the process, Raymond Dart's announcement of the 'Taung Child' (Australopithecus africanus) from South Africa was disregarded by many (including the anatomist Sir Arthur Keith) who questioned Dart's claim that this small-brained fossil represented a genuine Pleistocene hominid.

Lifecycle costing of low energy housing refurbishment: A case study of a 7 year retrofit in Chester Road, London

The low energy retrofit of the UK existing building stock is an urgent matter after the government’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% until 2050. This research addressed the question of whether it is preferable to refurbish in an extensive way or to choose a retrofit strategy with lower capital cost, embodied energy and CO2, tackling issues of cost-effectiveness, embodied and operational energy throughout the lifecycle of an existing Victorian house in London. The indicator Cost per Ton carbon Saved (CTS) was used, which resulted in higher values for the EnerPHit retrofit model, rendering it a less viable alternative. It was also concluded that retrofitting, in general and especially the application of EnerPHit, is an appealing option only with rising gas prices, low discount rates and long lifespans. Those results were even more amplified when climate change was taken into account, a conclusion very important for the application of future legislation and the possible transfer of this study to other climates. It was deduced that a house’s remaining lifetime is a very significant factor to be taken into account, as investments of higher capital cost give higher benefit in long term.

John H. Jackson—WTO Institution Builder

John H Jackson was a mentor, an advisor, a role model, and a dear friend to me since I had the privilege of studying with him at the University of Michigan thirty-five years ago. I strive to teach the way he taught me, to write the way that he wrote— never measuring up to his exacting standards, but always aiming for the clarity of thought, analytical precision, and passionate vision for the future that he brought to his work. Most people think of academics as distant from policymaking in the real world, but John was an exception. He was very influential with trade policymakers, in the USA and around the world, not only because of his prolific writings and speeches, but more importantly, because he actively engaged with them in Geneva and capitals. This is the story of perhaps his greatest contribution: to the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 1990, John published a short monograph, Restructuring the GATT System. In it, he outlined the history of the failure of the International Trade Organization, described the ‘defective constitution’ of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) system, and prescribed a remedy: a charter for a new WTO. In late 1989 to early 1990, he actively promoted his ideas at a conference at Chatham House in London, at meetings with ambassadors in Geneva, and with officials in Brussels. Around that time, I wrote a paper based on the ideas contained in my professor’s book for circulation among Canadian trade policy officials negotiating the Uruguay Round. Their initial response was that the USA and Japan would never agree to an international organization, it was not negotiable. By a mysterious twist of fate, my paper found its way into the Minister of International Trade’s office where it was read by his Senior Policy Advisor, William (Bill) Crosbie who showed it to his cousin, Minister John Crosbie. The Minister was so excited about the idea that he invited John to a special meeting in St John’s, Newfoundland (the Minister’s home city) on a very foggy winter’s day, with Sylvia Ostry (Deputy Minister and Chief Negotiator for Canada in the Uruguay Round at that time), GATT Ambassador John Weekes, Assistant Deputy Minister Gerald Shannon (who would later become

An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities trans. and ed. by Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith

Reviewed by: An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities trans. and ed. by Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith Ismail K. Poonawala An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe: The Book of Curiosities by Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith (eds and trans), 2014. Leiden and Boston: Brill, xii + 698 pp., + facsimile of Bodleian MS Arab c. 90, fol. 1A-fol. 49A ( 92 pp.), £188.25. ISBN: 9789004255647 (hbk). This thick volume of over 700 pages is a detailed account of the heavens and earth, illustrated by an unparalleled series of maps and astronomical diagrams. With topics ranging from comets to the island of Sicily, from lunar mansions to the sources of the Nile, it represents the extent of geographical, astronomical and astrological knowledge of the eleventh century. It is lavishly and aesthetically produced with a colour facsimile of the unique manuscript and numerous maps, including two of the world, one rectangular and the other circular. In addition, it includes maps of the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and Caspian Seas, Sicily, Cyprus, the Bays of Byzantium, the sources of the Nile, as well as river maps of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Indus and the Oxus. This authoritative and critical edition of An Eleventh-Century Egyptian Guide to the Universe, with annotated translation, is of high scholarly quality. It opens a unique window on the worldview of medieval Islam and represents the extent of the geographical, astronomical and astrological knowledge of the time. It is a welcome addition, particularly, to the list of Muslim contributions to cosmological science and cartography. Both Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith should be congratulated for their valuable efforts. The project for the preparation of this book extended over a decade. We do not know the history of this highly illustrated manuscript of a hitherto-unknown Arabic cosmological treatise, nor where it was [End Page 359] discovered, or how. What we do know is that on 10 October 2000 Christie's, a prestigious auction house in London, offered it for sale and Sam Fogg, a well-known London dealer in rare books and manuscripts, bought it. Later, it was discovered that eight other copies of the entire text, or portions of it, without most of the illustrations, were preserved in manuscripts dating from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries that had gone unnoticed by scholars due to the work's anonymity. Fogg, thereafter, offered the manuscript to the Bodleian Library at a price well under its true market value. Following an extensive fundraising effort, in June 2002 the Bodleian acquired it. The manuscript contains a remarkable series of early maps and astronomical diagrams, most of which are unparalleled in any Greek, Latin or Arabic sources known to be preserved today. Both its illustrations and the Arabic text preserve material gathered from Muslim astronomers, historians, scholars and travellers during the ninth to eleventh centuries whose works are now either totally lost or only partially preserved in fragments in later sources. The Arabic title of the book is Kitāb Gharā'ib al-funūn wamulaḥ al-'uyūn (The Book of Curiosities of the Sciences and Marvels for the Eyes). It has been recognized as one of the most important discoveries in the history of cartography during recent decades. The manuscript copy is without colophon, that is, unsigned and undated. However, from the appearance of the paper, ink and script, the editors presume a possible dating to the end of the twelfth century. Unfortunately, the author's name is unknown. What is known is that it was composed in Egypt during the reign of the Fatimids, but the name of the reigning caliph is not mentioned. Following the basmala, ḥamdala and taṣliya, the introduction simply states 'And [may the prayers of God be] on the leaders of the community from among his [Muhammad's] descendants, the virtuous chosen ones, the good caliphs.'1 The book begins with a response to a plea for information from a fellow scholar. The author states: You have asked me … to write a volume encompassing the principles of the raised-up roof [i.e. the sky] and the laid-down bed [i.e...

Thomas Adès and Meredith Oakes: The Tempest

Abstract This article analyses the opera The Tempest, composed by Thomas Adès to a text written for him by Meredith Oakes (after Shakespeare); it was first staged at The Royal Opera House in London in 2004. The text is first examined for its relationship with Shakespeare’s original play; the plot, cuts, transpositions and significant additions are all examined; then the relationship between the dramatic themes of the opera and those of the source text, and the ways in which direct quotations from Shakespeare are used and reworked, are also considered. In these last two sections the music of the opera begins to feature in the analysis, and text and music are examined as an integrated whole in the sections that follow, which discuss in turn the four principal characters Prospero, Caliban, Miranda and Ariel. Two closing sections consider aspects of the structure and style of the music that have not been explored earlier in the article. There are numerous quotations from the libretto, three plates and five music examples.

Hybrid PV and solar-thermal systems for domestic heat and power provision in the UK: Techno-economic considerations

A techno-economic analysis is undertaken to assess hybrid PV/solar-thermal (PVT) systems for distributed electricity and hot-water provision in a typical house in London, UK. In earlier work (Herrando et al., 2014), a system model based on a PVT collector with water as the cooling medium (PVT/w) was used to estimate average year-long system performance. The results showed that for low solar irradiance levels and low ambient temperatures, such as those associated with the UK climate, a higher coverage of total household energy demands and higher CO2 emission savings can be achieved by the complete coverage of the solar collector with PV and a relatively low collector cooling flow-rate. Such a PVT/w system demonstrated an annual electricity generation of 2.3MWh, or a 51% coverage of the household’s electrical demand (compared to an equivalent PV-only value of 49%), plus a significant annual water heating potential of to 1.0MWh, or a 36% coverage of the hot-water demand. In addition, this system allowed for a reduction in CO2 emissions amounting to 16.0 tonnes over a life-time of 20years due to the reduction in electrical power drawn from the grid and gas taken from the mains for water heating, and a 14-tonne corresponding displacement of primary fossil-fuel consumption. Both the emissions and fossil-fuel consumption reductions are significantly larger (by 36% and 18%, respectively) than those achieved by an equivalent PV-only system with the same peak rating/installed capacity. The present paper proceeds further, by considering the economic aspects of PVT technology, based on which invaluable policy-related conclusions can be drawn concerning the incentives that would need to be in place to accelerate the widespread uptake of such systems. It is found that, with an electricity-only Feed-In Tariff (FIT) support rate at 43.3p/kWh over 20years, the system cost estimates of optimised PVT/w systems have an 11.2-year discounted payback period (PV-only: 6.8years). The role and impact of heat-based incentives is also studied. The implementation of a domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) at a rate of 8.5p/kWh in quarterly payments leads to a payback reduction of about 1year. If this incentive is given as a one-off voucher at the beginning of the system’s lifetime, the payback is reduced by about 2years. With a RHI rate of 20 p/kWh (about half of the FIT rate) PVT technology would have approximately the same payback as PV. It is concluded that, if primary energy (currently dominated by fossil fuels) and CO2 emission minimisation are important goals of national energy policy, PVT systems offer a significantly improved proposition over equivalent PV-only systems, but at an elevated cost. This is in need of careful reflection when developing relevant policy and considering technology incentivation. Currently, although heat outweighs electricity consumption by a factor of about 4 (by energy unit) in the UK domestic sector, the support landscape has strongly favoured electrical microgeneration, being inclined in favour of PV technology, which has been experiencing a well-documented exponential growth over recent decades.

Georg Friedrich Haas Atthis and Matthew Rogers The Virtues of Things, The Linbury Studio, Royal Opera House, London

The Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House in London has hosted an impressive range of intimate experimental music theatre works over the last few years. The 2014/15 season, for example, has featured prominent premieres of new works by Harrison Birtwistle and David Harsent, and a ballet staging of John Adams' Shaker Loops, amongst a range of other interesting concerts and shows. The late-April premiere run of Matthew Rogers's The Virtues of Things and an early-May staging by Netia Jones of Georg Friedrich Haas's song-cycle on fragments of Sappho, Atthis, showed how well the Royal Opera uses the smaller space and shorter runs common to the Linbury to programme in quick succession such distinctive pieces from across the spectrum of contemporary music. Atthis, which I attended on 24 April 2015, was perhaps the more intriguing of these two shows, since in conception and execution it was so bold; though Virtues has its own qualities, to which I'll get in a moment.

Stanislavski on Stage: The Benedetti Legacy

The foundation in 2007 of The Stanislavski Centre, the parent organization of the Stanislavski Studies journal, came about directly through the work of the late Professor Jean Benedetti (1930–2012) which originated when he was the Principal of Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance from 1970 to 1987. Starting with the publication of Stanislavski: An Introduction in 1982, and culminating in the editing and translation of the new Routledge Stanislavski editions, published in 2008 and 2009, with much additional work in between, Benedetti became established as one of the world’s most influential Stanislavski scholars. As founding Patron of The Centre, Benedetti witnessed its inaugural event, the Stanislavski on Stage exhibition of photographic material from the Centre’s archives, at London’s National Theatre in 2008. To mark the 150th anniversary of Stanislavski’s birth in 1863, the exhibition was re-staged at Pushkin House in Central London, accompanied by a short lecture series. The opening night of this exhibition was designed to celebrate Jean Benedetti’s life and work. Under the chairmanship of the College’s current Principal, Professor Michael Earley, the Head of the Centre, Dr Paul Fryer, assembled a panel of leading Stanislavski experts and practitioners, several of whom had direct experience of working with Benedetti himself, and many of whom have contributed major publications to the current scholarship. Their discussions, debates and deliberations are published here for the first time, not only as a fascinating exploration of Stanislavski’s approaches and the way in which they are taught today, but also as a memorial to Jean Benedetti, whose pioneering work opened up an entirely new level of understanding for English-speaking readers.

MEDFASH (Medical Foundation for HIV & Sexual Health)

MEDFASH (Medical Foundation for HIV & Sexual Health) is an independent charity dedicated to quality in sexual healthcare including HIV. We began in 1987 when individuals within the British Medical...

Catch and Release

Catch and Release

Modernist Voyages: Colonial Women Writers in London, 1890–1945 by Anna Snaith

Modernist Voyages: Colonial Women Writers in London, 1890-1945 by Anna Snaith Cambridge University Press, 2014. 278 pages Anna Snaith's Modernist Voyages: Colonial Women Writers in London, 1890-1945, is a timely study that illuminates colonial women writers' foundational role in literary modernism and the ways in which their representations of London disrupt imperial claims to stability. Through her paradigm of the "voyage in," with its playful reversal of Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out (1915), Snaith focuses on the unprecedented mobility offered by the ship to demonstrate how colonial women writers shaped modernity: "These women were not coming to London solely to experience modernity, they were a constituent part of it" (26). Modernist Voyages is, in short, a story of reversals: a reversal of the traditional route of imperial expansion from London to the colonies, a reversal of London's assumed influence on colonial literary production, and a reversal of critical conversations and practices. Modernist Voyages participates in the "spatial turn" within the new modernist studies and yet distinguishes itself by restoring the issue of gender to current debates within the field. Feminist scholars of modernist literature, particularly Jane Garrity and Anne Fernald, have critiqued Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz for their dismissal of sexuality and gender as alternate modes of scholarship in "The New Modernist Studies" (2008). Snaith lends her voice to this debate and poignantly summarizes the problem: "It is as though that primarily recuperative project [on modernist women writers in the 1970s-1990s] is now complete, and critical momentum needs to look elsewhere" (10). Feminist recuperation and "critical momentum" are not mutually exclusive, and Snaith's refrain of "both ... and" attempts to address this impasse: these writers were both feminists and anticolonialists, a position that scholars consistently fail to appreciate. Snaith's deep historical research into the lives of these seven women--Olive Schreiner (South Africa), Sarojini Naidu (India), Sara Jeannette Duncan (Canada), Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand),Jean Rhys (Dominica), Una Marson (Jamaica), and Christina Stead (Australia)--raises provocative methodological questions as she gestures toward a more expansive understanding of literary modernism's terrains. Uniting the diverse cast of characters in Modernist Voyages are London and the sea, two settings whose importance raises them almost to the status of character in Snaith's work. In line with Henri Lefebvre's work on the social production of space, Snaith's spatial analyses of London trace different topographies that illuminate how various colonies subtend and haunt the unreal city, signaling London's inherent instability. Instead of reifying London's position as the facilitator of transnational modernism, then, Snaith's concentration on these writers' London years demonstrates how the imperial city fostered both their feminism and anti-imperialism, thus contributing to the destabilization of empire's ideology. London also epitomizes the criteria by which Snaith designates these writers as "modernist": "The combined focus on urbanism, capitalism and colonialism in their work constitutes a thoroughgoing consideration of the forms of modernity and its transnational manifestations" (8). In terms of recuperative praxis, finally, the focus on London introduces several writers into the broader category of transnational modernism. For instance, until now Sara Jeannette Duncan and Una Marson have primarily been discussed in the context of either Canadian or Jamaican literature, subordinating each writer's cosmopolitanism to her national origins. Snaith's remapping of London is compelling, but her emphasis on the sea as a facilitator of a distinctly feminist transnational modernism proves her most significant accomplishment. Employing Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia from "Of Other Spaces" (1984), she argues that the ship represents a place moving through a hegemonic space and creating a space of resistance. …

The Pastimes of the People: Photographing House and Garden in London's Small Suburban Homes, 1880–1914

As access to photographs and improved housing increased from the turn of the century, images of front and back gardens taken by or for householders became a popular form of domestic photography. While all kinds of streets were photographed in this way, those built for an expanding artisan and clerical class who migrated to London's ‘bye-law’ suburbs form a significant proportion of surviving images. Carefully delineated photographs of terraced and semi-detached house fronts and back gardens may be read as individual records of family advancement and personal celebrations of the space and privacy of the new homes. Yet specific forms of these photographs were designed for sharing beyond the family, creating a semi-public visual culture and a dispersed photographic record of the exteriors of the working-class and lower-middle-class suburban house. Using representative examples of two groups of these sources—photographic postcards and readers' photographs published in Amateur Gardening magazine—this essay explores how and why the inhabitants of London's outer suburbs presented themselves, at home in their gardens, to family, friends and fellow gardeners. It finds that both photography and gardening could be social pastimes, and that through their exchange, these ‘suburban’ photographs reflected and even consciously demonstrated social progress in the form of increased leisure time and self-contained space in which to exercise it productively at home.

Durham House and the Chapels Royal: their liturgical impact on the Church of Scotland

AbstractEver since the laying of the foundation stone of the present Norman building, Durham Cathedral has had an ambiguous relationship with Scotland – some good (the huge contribution of Dean William Whittingham through liturgy, metrical psalms and the Geneva Bible) and some extremely negative (the cathedral served as the prison for the Scottish prisoners after the battle of Dunbar). Amongst the more negative are the liturgical ideals and practices of the Durham House group, more commonly though inaccurately known as ‘Laudians’. The members of the group, which did include William Laud, were the protégés of the bishop of Durham, Richard Neile, and they met in his house in London. He promoted many as prebendaries at Durham Cathedral, and there they developed their liturgical ideals and practices. These ideals were ones which Neile shared with his contemporaries and close friends, Bishops Lancelot Andrewes and John Buckeridge. This article argues that the origin and precedent for these practices were the Chapels Royal with which most of the ‘players’ had affiliation in some way or other. Elizabeth I insisted on liturgical ceremonial and furnishings that supported or matched the grandeur of court ceremonial. It was a style which she hoped would also be adopted in English cathedrals. It was a style of worship which also appealed to James VI and through the Chapels Royal in Scotland he attempted to introduce a similar liturgical style. He also sought to conform the Church of Scotland to the Church of England, both in polity and liturgical text. The policy was continued by Charles I, who attempted to extend it to the Scottish cathedrals. Opponents of this court liturgical style and ‘Englishing’ of the liturgy found it convenient to blame the bishops who were given the task of implementing the liturgical changes rather than attack the source, namely the monarchy. The ultimate outcome was that, rather than the Church of Scotland adopting the 1637 Book of Common Prayer and Durham House ceremonial, it eventually even lost the liturgy which Scottish tradition had ascribed to John Knox, but the lion's share of which was more probably the work of Dean William Whittingham. Instead the Church of Scotland accepted the Directory of Public Worship, itself mainly the work of English divines. It became one of the few Reformed churches that did not have a set form for its public worship.

Staircase showcase for ultra-high-strength fibre-reinforced concrete

A stunning new concrete, stainless steel and glass spiral staircase has recently been installed in the historic Somerset House in central London, UK. The elegant modular design – inspired by the structural system of the traditional spiral cantilever stairs in the grade 1 listed public building – has been made possible by the use of proprietary ultra-high-strength fibre-reinforced concrete for the 104 stair treads and intermediate landings. This paper describes the design, analysis and construction of the new staircase and in particular the engineering properties – and possibilities – afforded by using super-strong, ductile concrete.

Remote assessment of cultural heritage environments with wireless sensor array networks.

The logistics and cost of environmental monitoring can represent challenges for heritage managers, partly because of the sheer number of environmental parameters to consider. There is a need for a system, capable of monitoring the holistic impact of the environment on cultural materials while remaining relatively easy to use and providing remote access. This paper describes a dosimetric system based on piezoelectric quartz crystal technology. The prototype sensing module consists of an array of piezoelectric quartz crystals (PQC) coated with different metals (Fe, Cu, Ni and Sn) and includes a temperature and relative humidity sensor. The communication module involves an 802.15.4 low-power radio and a GPRS gateway which allows real time visualisation of the measurements online. An energy management protocol ensures that the system consumes very low power between measurements. The paper also describes the results and experiences from two heritage field deployments, at Apsley House in London, UK, and at the Royal Palaces of Abomey in Benin. Evaluation of PQC measurements, temperature, relative humidity and the rate of successful transmission over the communication systems are also reported.

A UK-based assessment of hybrid PV and solar-thermal systems for domestic heating and power: System performance

The goal of this paper is to assess the suitability of hybrid PVT systems for the provision of electricity and hot water (space heating is not considered) in the UK domestic sector, with particular focus on a typical terraced house in London. A model is developed to estimate the performance of such a system. The model allows various design parameters of the PVT unit to be varied, so that their influence in the overall system performance can be studied. Two key parameters, specifically the covering factor of the solar collector with PV and the collector flow-rate, are considered. The emissions of the PVT system are compared with those incurred by a household that utilises a conventional energy provision arrangement. The results show that for the case of the UK (low solar irradiance and low ambient temperatures) a complete coverage of the solar collector with PV together with a low collector flow-rate are beneficial in allowing the system to achieve a high coverage of the total annual energy (heat and power) demand, while maximising the CO2 emissions savings. It is found that with a completely covered collector and a flow-rate of 20L/h, 51% of the total electricity demand and 36% of the total hot water demand over a year can be covered by a hybrid PVT system. The electricity demand coverage value is slightly higher than the PV-only system equivalent (49%). In addition, our emissions assessment indicates that a PVT system can save up to 16.0tonnes of CO2 over a lifetime of 20years, which is significantly (36%) higher than the 11.8tonnes of CO2 saved with a PV-only system. All investigated PVT configurations outperformed the PV-only system in terms of emissions. Therefore, it is concluded that hybrid PVT systems offer a notably improved proposition over PV-only systems.